Yahoo China has the Worst Filtering Policy

rmunaval writes "Reporters Without Borders has an article on search-result censorship in China by different companies. The conclusion was made based on six politically sensitive keywords. A search on yahoo.cn resulted in 97% pro-Beijing results compared to 83% on google.cn and 78% on msn.cn." From the article: "[Yahoo!] is therefore censoring more than its Chinese competitor Baidu. Above all, the organisation was able to show that requests using certain terms, such as 6-4 (4 June, date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), or 'Tibet independence', temporarily blocked the search tool. If you type in one of these terms on the search tool, first you receive an error message. If you then go back to make a new request, even with a neutral key word, yahoo.cn refuses to respond."

Comments

Olympics

[TrappedByMyself]

It will be very interesting to see what happens during the 2008 Olympics when a ton of Westerners are getting their internet gimped. I wonder if China will have free internet zones to avoid bad press.

Wow

[42Penguins]

Every once in a while I think censorship has gotten bad here in the USA.
Try searching "Tiananmen Square" on yahoo.cn and compare to yahoo.com.

If I had more bandwidth, I'd gladly put up a proxy for these folks.

Re:On the third try...

[wr0x2]

You realize what bullshit this is, right? They have millions of internet users, and a huge number of such requests each day. The only possible course of action to take against users searching for this stuff is timing out their requests for a while.

morally ambiguous

[bigpat]

If you type in one of these terms on the search tool, first you receive an error message. If you then go back to make a new request, even with a neutral key word, yahoo.cn refuses to respond.

I wonder if it is better to let your customers search for things that will get them persecuted? If there is simply an error then Yahoo could probably get away with simply not logging the attempted search. So eventually when they are compelled to hand over search logs to the police then they can claim that it was simply an error and perhaps not log the attempt in any detail. And, except that it is now documented, it is so subtle that police would be none the wiser.

Then again this is precisely the type of thing authoritarian governments count on, that merely the threat of persecution is enough to suppress most challenges to their authority. Leaving the few real challenges to their authority to be dealt with harshly. Authoritarian and totalitarian governments really turn morality on its head and being honest about even the littlest thing might get yourself or someone else hurt or killed.

Would this work?

[Astatine210]

As a possible tactic to foil China's crippling of internet searching (or, for that matter, any country's policy of censoring its internet input), set up a number of "code word" euphemisms for events happening in China that match phrases that don't initially look suspicious to the authorities, and which will blend into the background of most searches until long after the proverbial cat is out of the bag.

For instance, set up a website that details the Tianenmen Square massacre of 1989; however, instead of plastering "Tianenmen Square Massacre" all over it, refer to it as the "Hunan Blossom Harvest". The language and pictures will make certain to anyone viewing the site that this is anything but horticultural; it's a depiction of a vicious crackdown on a peaceful public demonstration, with plenty of blatant "clues" to when and where it happened. Get plenty of friends to make websites referring to this event in the same manner.

All it takes is for one returning "dissident" armed with the phrase, and I'm fairly certain the news will spread meme-like far faster than the authorities can crack down on it.

Rinse and repeat with clear criticism of the Saudi royal family in slightly euphemistic Arabic, and other fun stuff.

Re:Wow

[GbrDead]

Your comparison reminds me of an old joke we had here during the totalitarism:

An American and a Bulgarian are talking. The American says:
-Here, in the USA, we are really free. For example, I can go just in front of the White House, and shout: "Down with Ronald Reagan!", and nothing bad will happen to me.
-Oh, the same here: I can go just in front of the Party Central, and shout: "Down with Ronald Reagan!".

It is sad what has happened to the USA...

Re:Wow

[Danse]

On a news program a few months back, the reporter interviewed a group of Chinese college students. All all grew up in the time since Tiananmen. Shown the famous "tank man" photo, it was the first time any of them had seen it, none knew what it was about.

Well they definitely aren't being taught about it in school. And they aren't going to learn about it on TV, or the Net. If you're a parent, you probably don't want to talk to them about it either as kids tend to run their mouths all the time and could get themselves and you in a lot of trouble. So I'd say that the censorship has been pretty effective.